Parish History

PRESCOT St Mary, a market-town and parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of West Derby, S. division of the county of Lancaster, 8 miles east by northeast of Liverpool. The parish consists of the chapelries of Farnworth, Rainford, St. Helen's, and Great Sankey, and the townships of Bold, Cronton (which had at one time, 31 Nonconformist chapels in the area--mostly Welsh), Cuerdley, Ditton (Hough Green), Eccleston, Parr, Penketh, Prescot, Rainhill, Sutton, Whiston, Widness, and Windle.

There are chapels at Eccleston, Farnworth, Parr, Rainford, Rainhill, St. Helen's, Great Sankey, and Sutton.

The Unitarians, Primitive Methodists, and Wesleyan Methodists, have places of worship in the town; and at Portico, a mile and a half on the east, is a Roman Catholic chapel, built in 1790, and dedicated to St Nicholas.[1]

Resources

Civil Registration

Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records

Online Records (Under Construction)

Prescot St. Mary parish registers and those registers of all of its smaller chapelries lying within its boundaries have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following web sites and ranges of years:

Original Records

The Lancashire Record Office at Bow Lane, Preston PR2 1RE, holds the original parish registers in its vast collections. Contact their website for contact information.

The Family History Library has microfilmed the parish registers and Bishop's transcripts of Prescot St. Mary parish for the years ____-____. These films are available for ordering/circulating and researching at any one of its satellite FamilySearch Centers worldwide.

Census records

Census records from 1841 to 1911 are available online. For access, see England Census Records and Indexes Online. Census records from 1841 to 1891 are also available on film through a Family History Center or at the Family History Library.

Court records

A manor court baron was held here six times a year; and a court leet on the festival of Corpus Christi, when a coroner for the manor and liberty is appointed.

There is a court of requests, for the recovery of debts to any amount, at which the steward of the manor presides; and petty-sessions for the Prescot division of the hundred take place once a month.[2]

Probate records

Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Lancashire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers

Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.